Changing Processors in Mac Pro (Now with report!)

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 6:03 am

Hey!

I was drunk in Berlin and ordered a pair of new processors (x5365) for my Mac Pro 1,1 off eBay.

Now I'm waiting for them to arrive and trying to prepare. has anyone done this and have suggestions for what to think about when doing the switch?

If I understand things correctly, this will basically make it into a mac Pro 2,1.
Will they also make it possible to start in true 64bit kernel mode?

Anyone know how much the performance improves? It will double the number of cores from 4 to 8.

I'm quite excited as I hope they'll blow new life into my old machine. But also quite scared. Have never done any more than addad ram and harddrives to my computers before...

cheers

DZ

Alfred Zigoma · Post by **Alfred Zigoma** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:37 am

I it did also all have passed with advantage
Productivity has increased about with 5300 up to 8500 bench, but I have 2,66
In your case should be almost in 2 times

macguy · Post by **macguy** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 10:08 am

If that LB had those processors on it it then should work but if your ram speed is different, you may have issues but I'd think as long as it's switching the processors from dual to quads... shouldn't be an issue if it's the same socket etc.

Alfred Zigoma · Post by **Alfred Zigoma** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:54 am

In Mac Pro 1,1 native processors Woodcrest
upgrade it is possible to do only on Clovertown
More recent will not approach
If that all should pass processors Intel Xeon X5365 Quad-Core(2 х 3.0GHz Clovertown) smoothly

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:11 pm

Start combing thru Macrumors Forum for leads and ideas... good luck!

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:38 pm

Thanks (and Спасибо!).
There's some good guides around the web on how to do it. Still a bit nervous though, I will probably feel like a drunk trying to perform brain surgery

Was mostly curious if some of you here at my favourite forum had any experiences and maybe how the upgrade changed your Digital Performer performance...

Cheers!

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:41 pm

There are great posts on GS from users who have done this.
You need a special tool to get to the screws and you to apply heat paste etc.....
Looked well beyond my ability.lol

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 7:37 pm

Wow... I have a Mac Pro 1,1. This looks really interesting to me too!

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:22 am

James Steele wrote:Wow... I have a Mac Pro 1,1. This looks really interesting to me too!

Yes, I have the same machine but the 3ghz version. The quad 2.66 x5355s are pretty cheap (I guess around $300 for a pair?) but I went for the much more expensive quad 3ghz x5365s as I felt the difference otherwise wouldn't be worth the hassle. I got them for just under €500 for the pair. Some argue that it's better to sell the old computer and put that money towards a newer computer instead. But I simply can't afford a newer computer right now.

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:26 am

kgdrum wrote:There are great posts on GS from users who have done this.

Yes, this thread is worthwhile read for anyone interested in doing this thing:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... rades.html.

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:59 pm

So... I recieved the two Xeon x5365s and performed the operation... It was a bit tricky. Mainly because I didn't have a long enough hex-a-thing tool. Also getting the fan case out was hard as it was stuck somehow.

But eventually I got it done and swapped the CPUs and patched it all back together. It was really nervous starting the computer for the first time afterwards. I pictured it would be a loud bang followed by thick smoke. But lo and behold, it started!

First thing I noticed was that 'About This Mac' reported the processor as 2 x 3Ghz Unknown and it only saw 3 of my 9 gb of RAM. Both those were sort of expected. And by switching place between the two ram risers it saw the full 9gb. There was supposed to be an app rectifying the name, but apparently it's not working in Lion. There's also an EFI hack making it a Mac Pro 2,1 but that seemed way beyond my hacking skills for now.
Activity Monitor sees all 8 cores.

Then it was time to really test it. Opened a recent project in DP... and it crashed. Tried Final Cut Pro X. Also crash on start up. Uh oh!

Eventually tried to open a new project in DP and it worked fine. Opened other recent project and they opened fine. The difference with the one crashing DP is that it has an instance of MachFive 3. Tried adding M5v3 to a new project and that seemed to go well.

Then all of a sudden, Final Cut Pro X opened as well.
So now it all seems to be working pretty damn good. Haven't had much time to really try it out under preassure though.

How about performance?
A project I've been working on that started seeing processor spikes and I had to use buffer of 512 on now works in a similar way but with a buffer of 256. Here's the wierd thing, the Activity Monitor shows all 8 cores steadily chugging along at 25%... But DP's CPU monitor is jumping like crazy betwwen 40-80%. What's up with that? Seems to have been a problem with DP for a long time now.
Another, bigger project was starting to be totally unwieldy at 512 was having processorspikes, pops & cracks like crazy at 256. Didn't try it at 512. Couldn't be bothered to wait for all the samples to reload (why does DP have to reload the samples just because buffer changes? Ridiculous!)

Rendering in FCPX seemed faster and all 8 cores were used.

So, it seems the brute force is now there but somehow DP needs to get it's act together and sort out the processor spikes going on. Hopefully this will improve when DP goes 64bit.

Will try to post my findings as I get some real work done to report if it was worth it.

DZ

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 9:57 am

I found an utility that updates the firmware to make the Mac Pro 1,1 into a 2,1 and the processors are now properly recognised!
If anyone thinking of doing this you can find the firmware and discussion here:
http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1094.0.html
You have to register on the forum to get to the files.

Now everything seems to be working just great. Knock on wood.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 10:56 am

Did the firmware update help with the spiking in DP?

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 1:42 pm

Not really. But the spiking was there before I switched CPUs (and has always been there as far as I can remember) and it's better with the new processors, just not as much as I hoped. Over all the improvement looks to be worth it. Just that DP seem to be struggling to utilize the full strength of the processors when it comes to VIs.
Maybe it's my harddrives and memory that are too slow and it's the streaming of samples that kills the processors?

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